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Delimiter HP DL145 Opteron BF Special Review
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Delimiter HP DL145 Opteron BF Special Review

keltorsorikeltorsori Member
edited December 2013 in Reviews

I picked up one of the Delimiter server blowout specials on the HP DL145, specs as follows:

HP DL145 Dual Opteron, 2GB RAM, 250GB Disk:

  • 2 x Opteron 248
  • 2GB RAM
  • 250GB SATA Disk
  • 1 IP Address
  • Dedicated Power control (power on/off/reset as required)
  • 5TB Bandwidth
  • OS: Linux, Windows (you provide the license)
  • Gigabit port

Setup took a little longer than the 1-3 business days advertised, at 5 business days, but nothing was mission critical there, so no harm, no foul.

There is no KVM or virtual image support for their DL145s, so if you don't like the available images you're SOL. The image list is something that would have been handy to have as a pre-sale item; I could't find it in their knowledge base.

However, once your server is setup there is a long, reasonable list of available images for provisioning, including:

  • CentOS 5.10 (various flavors)
  • CentOS 5.9
  • CentOS 6 (various flavors)
  • Citrix Xenserver 6.2
  • Debian Squeeze (various flavors)
  • Debian Wheezy (various flavors)
  • Fedora 18
  • FreeBSD 10 beta
  • FreeBSD 8.2
  • FreeBSD 9
  • FreeBSD 9 rescue
  • OpenSUSE 12.3
  • OpenSUSE 13.1
  • Ovirt Management Server
  • Proxmox VE 3.0
  • Scientific Linux 6
  • Sysrcd (SSH/VNC rescue image)
  • Ubuntu 12.04 (32/64-bit flavors)
  • Ubuntu 12.10 (32/64-bit flavors)
  • Ubuntu 13.04 (32/64-bit flavors)
  • Ubuntu 13.10 (32/64-bit flavors)
  • Ultimate boot CD
  • Ultimate boot CD (memtest86+)
  • VMWare EXSi 5.1

Most of those images have additional installation options such as "Install OpenPanel" or "Install Plesk" or "Install cPanel" (I assume with a BYOL, of course).

Provisioning from an image is pretty quick: less than 10 minutes for Ubuntu or Debian (the only ones I've tried).

This is my first Opteron server and while it's certainly no speed demon, it's more than sufficient as a test lab server for various projects for me. Make times are a good deal longer than on similarly setup Intel gear, but I'm still impressed for the price.

Cloning various git repositories was speedy, with average download speeds hitting 10+MB/s (and one of my benchmark D/Ls hit 80.8MB/s). So, network speed is pretty darn good. There is no IPv6, and rDNS entries require a support ticket.

I had an initial issue with the IPMI not working for provisioning, so I created a support ticket and had a response and resolution within 30 minutes. Since then I've contacted support about a couple of other minor things (defaults on their images) and have been floored by the response time and willingness to go above and beyond in an "unmanaged" dedicated environment. I have been averaging something around 15 minutes for a response from support tickets.

I read some of the other posts about the history of the company and past issues, but given the support response I've gotten so far during Xmas week, I'm feeling pretty good about these guys and putting in an order for one of the BL460C's (and will post a further review once that's provisioned).

So far, for $120/yr I can't complain.

Serverbear benchmarks overview:

UnixBench score: 1356.0

I/O rate: 89.4 MB/second

Bandwidth rate: 80.8 MB/second

Link to full serverbear

Thanked by 1MarkTurner

Comments

  • Great in depth review, I'm just gonna throw a short one here too:

    Great price for $120/yr.

    Was delivered a couple days after deadline but it wasn't a big deal since I was on vacation then. Also IPMI password was wrong so I couldn't reinstall my OS, but after a support ticket they fixed it in less than a day.

    Great deal for $120/yr so far

  • btw your serverbear says your server has a 451GB hard drive, is that right? the package was 250 and mine has 233

  • @keltorsori - Thanks for the detailed review, please PM me your email.

    @mawr those Opterons are a hotch-potch of everything - 250GB is the minimum, but some have 350GB, 500GB, 1TB. Some have 4GB RAM, some 8GB and so on. In the end, we decided to just release them rather than going through each one and harmonising the specification.

  • df reports 226G with 212G available. @mawr said:

    btw your serverbear says your server has a 451GB hard drive, is that right? the package was 250 and mine has 233

  • edited January 2014

    Chiming in. I have their HP BL460C Dual X5150, 16GB (DDR2), 500GB.
    HP iLO 2 KVM/Remote Reboot, Gigabit port.

    Setup took longer than usual, at 5 days like normal. Had a few encounters with support for IP address. Support is generally very responsive and went beyond what they could have done and gave me advice and went back and forth with suggestions. Really, as long as your hardware is up, there's no need to really contact them. IPMI is extremely invaluable, including remote media. Network is superb for the $30/month I pay. It's not a mission critical application, just a media server currently utilizing Plex. Very satisfied with the service and deal I have received thus far.

    No ServerBear since I run Windows, sorry.

    Thanked by 1MarkTurner
  • @daxterfellowes - Thank you for the review.

    Can you PM me your email address, I want to check what took your order 5 days to deliver. Almost all orders in the past 3 weeks have completed within the usual timeline

  • @MarkTurner - PM'd you follow up details.

  • does anyone already got IPv6? no any reply to that ipv6 ticket in past 10 days, although @MarkTurner have said that it's probably a long and painful wait :)

  • @hotsnow - I would expect it anytime. In the past day we have helped Delimiter setup their IPv6 allocations so now its just a matter of them advising us where these allocations are to be routed and they will be able to provide them.

    I expect Monday/Tuesday next week you'll have a working IPv6 prefix.

    Thanked by 1hotsnow
  • @MarkTurner said:
    hotsnow - I would expect it anytime. In the past day we have helped Delimiter setup their IPv6 allocations so now its just a matter of them advising us where these allocations are to be routed and they will be able to provide them.

    I expect Monday/Tuesday next week you'll have a working IPv6 prefix.

    many thanks :)

  • Hi All - I placed an order on the 31st and am waiting for the server to be setup. I'm not in any particular hurry, but was wondering if I could use this thread to ask a newbie question? I have requested additional IP addresses and was planning to run ESXi on the server to setup a couple of virtual machines for my research lab. When I setup a virtual machine, I am assuming I need to setup my networking manually. Typically, what netmask value would I have to use on the VM?

  • @ct_tx depending whether you have multiple single IPs or a netblock will depend on the netmask. When your IPs are delivered you will receive a note of the netmask.

    If its multiple single IPs then you'll use 255.255.255.255 and the default route back via the host interface. If its a netblock then you'll use the relevant netmask for your block and default route to the provided gateway.

  • @MarkTurner said:
    ct_tx depending whether you have multiple single IPs or a netblock will depend on the netmask. When your IPs are delivered you will receive a note of the netmask.

    If its multiple single IPs then you'll use 255.255.255.255 and the default route back via the host interface. If its a netblock then you'll use the relevant netmask for your block and default route to the provided gateway.

    Just got the 16GB RAM, IPMI, BL460C

  • ct_txct_tx Member
    edited January 2014

    @MarkTurner said:
    ct_tx depending whether you have multiple single IPs or a netblock will depend on the netmask. When your IPs are delivered you will receive a note of the netmask.

    If its multiple single IPs then you'll use 255.255.255.255 and the default route back via the host interface. If its a netblock then you'll use the relevant netmask for your block and default route to the provided gateway.

    Thanks much for the quick response. Also, I got an email confirming that the server was setup a few minutes after this message. That was awesome! Thanks much!

  • @ct_tx @mcmyhost - Let me know how you get on with your servers

  • Today we've added automated installer support for Windows 2012R2. You can select it from the automated installer menu, this makes installation/reinstallation a lot simpler than mounting an ISO

    Thanked by 2AlexanderM hotsnow
  • @ct_tx said:
    Thanks much for the quick response. Also, I got an email confirming that the server was setup a few minutes after this message. That was awesome! Thanks much!

    Did you manage to get this set up and working with ESXi?

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